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The Top 25 Signs of a Dysfunctional Workplace

By Scarlet Pruitt on February 8, 2008

Throughout time, people everywhere have engaged in the great tradition of complaining about the workplace. But as a boss or an HR manager, how do you know when job complaints are general venting and when there is really something wrong? Part of your job is to make sure that employees are happy and productive, and that can’t happen in a dysfunctional environment.

If you’re having a hard time separating hyperbole from legitimate complaints, it may be worth reviewing the top 25 signs of a dysfunctional workplace. Note that all the examples below — listed in no particular order — are taken from real-world work situations, no matter how unlikely they might seem.

1. Nothing can get done without the boss’s approval. Sure, the boss has the final say, but work should be delegated, with employees taking responsibility for tasks that do not require the boss’s personal time and attention. The organization will be much more productive and empowered if the top dog doesn’t have to sign off on every little thing.2. Nothing can get done unless employees go behind the boss’s back. It’s one thing if the boss is overly involved, but it’s a serious problem if the boss is actually a roadblock to getting work done. It may be time to call in the consultants.3. No one is sure who the boss really is. The titles may be clear, but so many people are jostling for the top post that employees aren’t sure who actually makes the final decisions. This can cause more than a little frustration.

4. No one is getting paid on time — or at all. This is very obvious sign that things are going poorly. Even at startups, employees need to be clear about their pay schedule to feel secure.5. Cubicle mates IM (instant message) each other but never talk. It’s nice to have a quiet office, but some topics require face-to-face discussion. As with email, it’s difficult to express tone via IM, opening the door to misunderstandings.

6. No one contributes in meeting because everyone is busy IM-ing. Meetings are for brainstorming ideas and discussing important topics, not for secret, snarky IM conversations about how boring the meeting is. Pull the plug.7. Too many pointless meetings are being held. If a meeting has no set agenda or is just being held to rehash previous discussions, axe it.8. There’s more than one “secret couple” on staff. It makes sense that a lot of couples meet each other at work because that’s where they spend a lot of their time. However, having “secret” couples on staff (some of which involve people that may be having an extramarital affair) can lead to workplace tension and drama.9. Attorneys outnumber staff. Perhaps your business practices should be re-examined?10. Reward system? What reward system? You can’t have a stick and no carrot.11. The IT head gets arrested for hosting porn on company servers. This is a clear case of lack of supervision and not being in tune with what’s going on with the staff.

12. IT rules are so strict that you’re not allowed to know your own computer login. It’s important to have IT security policies, but if the rules are too strict, employees can feel distrusted.

13. Your boss — an eccentric Internet millionaire — offers to pay your monthly salary in gold coins because “gold is more stable than the dollar.” Although management and entry-level employees rarely live the same lifestyle, management should at least show some understanding about employees’ financial needs.

14. Your manager was hired because she listed “whiskey” as a hobby on her résumé. Sure, having quirky staff members can liven up the workplace, but it’s not a good idea to hire someone just because they’d make a good drinking buddy or golf partner.

15. Your co-worker decides to show, not tell, the visiting U.K. executive what a “wedgie” is at an office holiday party. Even at office parties, there should be some sense of workplace propriety. Getting drunk at an office event and misusing the photocopy machine is a similar sign of workplace dysfunction.

16. The boss takes pride in his “wall of shame,” where employee mistakes are posted and circled in red for the entire world to see. Rewards can be public, but chastisement should be kept private.

17. The boss screams at the assistant when there's skim milk instead of half-and-half in the coffee. Just because the boss is in a position of authority doesn't mean that he or she can use that power to bully or intimidate employees.

18. Emergency drills are conducted without employees being told that it’s a drill. In general, the more information you share with your staff, the more they will feel like a contributing member of a team. Hiding crucial information can lead to distrust and a depleted sense of value.

19. At least once per week, you hear quiet sobbing from an adjacent cubicle. One unhappy employee can ruin the morale of the entire office. Try to immediately address any employee issues before they spread.

20. Entire departments go to lunch together every day, leaving parts of the company completely unmanned for hours at a time. Workplace camaraderie is great, except when the network goes down and there’s no one left in the IT department to fix it.

21. What matters is not what you’ve accomplished in a day, but how many hours you were seen “working.” We all know at least one person who hangs around until everyone else goes home or shows up at 7 a.m. just to make a good impression with the boss. However, odds are they are only working seven hours of their eight-hour day. Reward productivity, not time spent at the office.

22. The accounting department has accumulated 23 weeks of paid vacation because no one there has ever taken a day off. People are not machines. Encourage staff to take vacations, or they just might walk out one day.

23. Managers are CCd on every company email, even when it’s just about where to order lunch. This is called covering your back, and it usually happens when employees are not empowered enough to make decisions within their scope of authority.

24. The only way someone can get promoted is if a senior staff member dies. Hope is a powerful incentive to keep employees motivated and on task. If there is no hope of advancement, quality of work and enthusiasm will suffer.25. No one ever gets fired, no matter how ineffective they are at their job. Finally, while employees need hope, they also need expectations and standards. If doing a bad job doesn’t get a worker reprimanded or even fired, what’s the point of doing a good job?

More indicators of a dysfunctional workplace:

a) when you have more than one boss.
b) when the boss has trouble spelling four-letter words
c) when the entire project responsibility has been delegated to the person lowest on the totem pole, with no accompanying authority
e) when the boss decides he wants to be a hero every week, with total disregard to the previous week's obligations
f) when the boss hires only yes men
g) when the boss blatantly lies, and then lies about the lies
h) when the boss is responsible for nothing except the credit
i) when every little thing is seen as a crisis
j) when everything is top priority
k) when the boss cannot distinguish a 30-second task from a 3-month task
l) when the boss decides he has to make every technical decision even though he has the technical skills of a little school girl
m) when the boss doesn't know the answer to a question, so instead just gets mad to try to paper over his incompetence
n) when the boss asks for features to be deleted that the client specifically asked for, because he was too afraid to ask how they worked
o) when the boss demands that a client's features be added to all other client programs, even though no client payed for the work, because the boss cannot remember which feature was requested by which client
p) when the boss doesn't know what the requirements are, so instead diverts all discussion to optimization strategies of work that is still in the talking stage
q) when the boss has the emotional intelligence of a valley girl
r) when the boss hires dogbert
s) when the boss screams "make it go! make it go!"
t) when the boss tries to write a spec it resembles something that would be generated by a Lolcat
u) after the boss gets back from going out to lunch and complains that people are snatching quick bites at their desks while working on their projects
v) when the boss' goals are so wack that after they are inevitably missed it is considered in poor taste to even mention them because you couldn't without bursting into laughter at the utter insanity, thus making the boss look like the total idiot that he is for coming up with them
w) whenever you see the boss bend over (this is when he's pulling something new out of his ass, which will eventually make its way to your desk)
x) when the boss' girl friend works in the same building, the boss will make most of his decisions with his dick (exceptions: the day after the boss got laid, then everything is clover for those 24 hours)
y) when nothing's too good for the customer, as long as he doesn't have to do it
z) when the regurgitation reaction becomes a learned response after listening to your boss' ideas

That came much too easily. Sorry about that.

vanekl, Feb 8, 2008

I had to tell my boss her clothing was inappropriate for the workplace. I have seen almost everybody cry. We don't know what our jobs are.

S, Mar 1, 2008

Well... I'd take the gold coins over dollars actually... Who wants to get paid in garbage?

Well, Feb 9, 2008

WOW

dana.gunter@valero.com, Feb 9, 2008

The only way someone can get promoted is if a senior staff member dies is funny :)

hehe, Feb 10, 2008

there is a lot of dysfunction around and the level of dysfunction has a direct inverse relationship to the level of union activity in the workplace.
One thing unions are good at is identifying dysfunctional and illegal practices that if nipped in the bud can save the employer lots of money. No union or an ineffective union results in a power vacuum which managers overdose on. The result egotistical, narcistic and arrogant management styles come to the fore. many managers do not have good people skills so if there is no body to reign them in the sky is the limit and often the punters who run the business find out the hard way - ie when the company is sued by their ex employees.

Terry, Feb 11, 2008

Thanks, sometimes it is difficult to understand if it's you or your work place that is dysfunctional. I work for an Engineering Consultancy firm; a new London branch of an American company. I've been there over two years as CAD Coordinator and are still waiting for help from both sides of the Atlantic for setting up what I would of thought was one of the most important setions of a company that sends drawings out as the main 'face' of the company. I won't go into detail, but i am basically locked out a system controlled by the States, who don't understand that things are done differently in the UK and still have yet to send someone here to help set up the system that is at least - metric! There are other added issues with the symbols still not completed due to a requirement of an UK Engineer to actually give the nod that these are the standards we are actally going to use? Finace and marketing have liberally been going back and forward across the Atlantic, but no help for a section which is where all the design work ends up and is displayed. I just don't get the lack of interest in setting up standards for this section? I also have from your list 1, 2 - the main MD is not allowed to make decisions on the floor of the office as he doesn't understand how his own company is run or how to do things procedural, 3. The MD isn't actually the real boss, the project coordinator is. 4. Consultants are not being paid for at least one month pass handing in of bills - run stateside, 6. meetings just aren't being held, 10. 12, 17. being bullied and yelled at by certain members of staff is the norm...and yes it was over someone using 'their' milk. 19..that's me and 3 other senior Engineers and just as fed up, 22. what's a holiday again, what's a 7.5 hr day feel like, what's it like to be home before 8pm, 25. - this one really pisses me off as it's common here. You forgot one :). 26. High turn over rate of senior members of staff who can already see the writing on the wall. Well thanks for that; though I would like to piont out that I am planning to leave in April if nothing improves by then and coming back to Oz next year where at least the Australians know what the word hard work means.

Thanks

Tracey R, Feb 11, 2008

Scarlett:

Everyone needs to keep their eyes open for employee moral trends and your somewhat humorous and insightful tips should help make that effort easier. Thanks for your pointers! I linked to your post in my blog for the Innovators-Network ( http://blog.innovators-network.org ) in hopes that some of my readers will visit your site and read the piece in its entirety. Best wishes for continues success.

Anthony Kuhn, Feb 11, 2008

Having provided high level consulting services at a number of large international corporations, I was often "embedded" as part of the executive team. I would add the following to the list.
1. Beware the SPOs (Sales Prevention Officers) who will do anything to avoid successful sales as this might mean extra work.
2. Get employees to complete meaningless "compliance" online courses, such as ethical awareness questions ("your colleague claims extra mileage to play golf after work - should you a) report him/her to HR, b) speak to him/her sternly or c) join him/her for a round"). The real reason is to cover the corporate legal arses if they get sued.
3. The corpration awards people for comleting all weekly Siebel entries of every account, hour worked and revenue expectation, rather than actualy getting results.Forward revenue planning will allow the CEO to claim bonusses and tel a good story to the analysts and thus drive share price.
4. CC everyone on your emails so your backside is covered.
5. Legal department will spend 3 months arguing a basic customer contract on the basis of SOX compliance. In fact they are expanding their department because of the workload.

A business expert told me years ago that once an organisation reached 400 employees, people are able continuously work on internal projects only.

Just a selection for you
Rgds HE

Henry Edwards, Feb 11, 2008

When the executive who asked for you to start an 'important' new project stops and asks you just a couple weeks later - 'why are we doing this project? who initiated it?'

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